DIY wall art for adults

Lately there has been an invasion of DIY tutorials teaching how to redecorate basically everything. Recycling and making things by yourself is the new religion but I have done it for years, recycling, adapting, preserving objects, paintings, furniture in my projects, above all if they are quality pieces.

Sometimes though I have the impression that these online decoration projects look better than they actually are. Things sometimes look cute in a photo but they are quite basic in real life and make your house look like a student flat. The ones I have selected above for you are ideas that work.

When choosing your DIY projects from the internet keep in mind the following advice:

1) Materials cost money, so sometimes a project is pitched as a cheap one but can actually end up costing like a professionally framed poster. Before starting, take into consideration what you need (glue, paint, frame, utensils?) and how much you are going to end up spending.

2)Pick a project that doesn’t involve ruining the wall. If you don’t like the result it is much easier to paint over it or fill in a hole than having to re-plaster the entire wall.

3)Trust the projects explained with numerous and close up photos. For instance, sometimes DIY wall art looks fine from the front but from the side you can see all sorts of flaws.

4)If the project involves textiles, pick some nice fabric. The author of the project above (the nursery) used a Marimekko fabric; with more ordinary and less impressive fabric, the result would have been totally different.

4)Try to not do things that you have already seen in many other places. We tend to be attracted to what it is familiar to us but the net is a massive source of ideas, why copy what has already been largely copied?